Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 39.djvu/176

 164 Southern Historical Society Papers.

have been recognized. But at the same time, I beHeve that the advanced Liberals, or Radicals, as they are commonly called, and who are generally supposed to have Republican tendencies, were favorable to the North. These advanced Liberals had per- suaded themselves to regard the Government of the United States as 'a government for the people, by the people,' and they feared that a final dissolution of the Union would be considered a failure of the Republican form of government and would check, if not destroy, a more democratic system in Europe. the Counsels of the Liberal party, if not in the Cabinet, at the time of the Civil War and the ardor with which they supported the Federal Government, and the violence with which they de- nounced the Southern leaders and the Southern people are still fresh in the memory of those representatives of the Confederacy who survive."
 * ♦ * There were some strong men of the above type in

Without prolonging these quotations, they are sufficient to show that 'Mr. Adams' alignment of the forces at work for and against recognition of the Confederacy is open to question. Cap- tain Bullock agrees with Mr. Adams, however, in. expressing the view that the Union of 1787 was virtually dissolved in 1861, and a new Union formed in 1865 by the military power of a majority of the States compelling the minority to accept their views of the national compact. That while the former was a confederation of States and a federal republic, the latter is founded upon a fusion of the whole people into one nation, with a supreme centralized executive and administrative govern- ment, and is no longer a Federal, but an Imperial Republic.

The effect of Mr. Seward's letter of instruction to ^Ir. Adams can be better understood by glancing for a moment at the posi- tion assumed at the very outset of the war upon the questions of blockade and belligerency. After Mr. Lincoln had issued his proclamations of blockade of the Southern Ports, and Mr. Davis had issued a counter proclamation. Lord Russell, in the House of Commons, on the 6th of IMay, 1861, stated "that after con- sultation with the law officers, the Government had come to the